Sponsors

140,000

Our goal to find 140,000 environmental love songs, media, art, theater and dance productions that inspire ecological actions, help save our sweet but gasping planet Earth from abrupt climate change and other ecological threats. Musicians, artists and fans worldwide are invited to help us win this game for all the life that loves to live.

Fans can help by
sponsoring us to write an environmental song about an issue of their choice or sponsor a song, art or other media we are working on. If you
sponsor one of Stele's (my) songs, you will get a copyright co-ownership certificate in your or a friend's name.

Songwriters are invited to add their songs to the Open Mic or any other post.

140,000 was chosen as it is the approximate number of endangered species.

For all the life, Stele Ely.
xoearth(et)yah()o(dat)com
72O. 34O. 8O8OGoogle+

More than 1/2 of all Americans drink bottled water; about a third of the public consumes it regularly. Sales have tripled in the past 10 years, to about $4 billion / year. Fueled by ads picturing towering mountains, pristine glaciers, and crystal-clear springs nestled in untouched forests yielding absolutely pure water. But is… total purity accurate? Are rules for bottled water stricter than those for tap water?

Not exactly. No one should assume that just because he or she purchases water in a bottle that it is necessarily any better regulated, purer, or safer than most tap water. NRDC has completed a four-year study of the bottled water industry, including its bacterial and chemical contamination problems. We have conducted a review of available information on bottled water and its sources, an in-depth assessment of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and all 50 states’ programs governing bottled water safety, and an analysis of government and academic bottled water testing results. We have compared FDA’s bottled water rules with certain international bottled water standards and with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules that apply to piped tap water supplied by public water systems. In addition, NRDC commissioned independent lab testing of more than 1,000 bottles of 103 types of bottled water from many parts of the country (California, the District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas). Our conclusions and recommendations follow.

An Exploding Bottled Water Market
There has been an explosion in bottled water use in the United States, driven in large measure by marketing designed to convince the public of bottled water’s purity and safety, and capitalizing on public concern about tap water quality. People spend from 240 to over 10,000 times more per gallon for bottled water than they typically do for tap water.

Some of this marketing is misleading, implying the water comes from pristine sources when it does not. For example, one brand of “spring water” whose label pictured a lake and mountains, actually came from a well in an industrial facility’s parking lot, near a hazardous waste dump, and periodically was contaminated with industrial chemicals at levels above FDA standards.

According to government and industry estimates, about one fourth of bottled water is bottled tap water (and by some accounts, as much as 40 percent is derived from tap water) — sometimes with additional treatment, sometimes not. more from NRDC

Advertising Hype. On the shelves of grocery stores, bottled water proliferates. New labels appear overnight claiming purity. In 2002, Americans paid $7.7 billion for bottled water and sales continue to increase.

These ideas have a source, and it’s not a mountain spring. Giant multinational companies like Nestle, Coke, and Pepsi are making a fortune on bottled water. In the U.S. a sip of bottled water costs on average 1,000 times a sip of water from the tap.

Use pitchers of water at your Club and community events?
Use containers that you can refill with tap water when you are away from home
If there is a problem with water quality in your community, use a good quality water filter which is much cheaper than bottled water and does not produce mounds of plastic waste. The average cost of filtered water is $0.13/gallon compared to $1.27 for bottled water.
Advocate for adequate funding and good public management of municipal water systems.
Monitor unusual land purchases near to natural springs.More from the Sierra Club on their Bottled Water Campaign

It’s ironic. In many parts of the world, there is no clean drinking water. Here in the U.S., pure, drinkable water flows out of every tap, and yet Americans buy a staggering amount of bottled water. We pay … over $15 billion a year.

Worse of all, the bottles are overflowing our landfills, and contribute to global warming. Take a look at this video from Doug James, and then check out these surprising facts.1…

Recycling would help, but we don’t usually do it. Less than 20 percent of the 28 billion single-serving water bottles that Americans buy each year are recycled. Some estimates are as low as 12 percent.

According to a Container Recycling Institute report [PDF], the national recycling rate for all beverage containers is 33 percent. In states with deposit systems, the rate jumps to 65-95 percent. But of the eleven states with deposit laws, only three include containers for non-carbonated beverages (like water), though non-carbonated beverages now comprise 27 percent of the market. …

National Geographic’s Green Guide notes, “…the federal share of funding for water systems has declined from 78 percent in 1973 to 3 percent today.” This places the financial burden almost entirely on local governments.

Food and Water Watch also talks about how important it is to stop this trend and maintain the quality of municipal water. Their Take Back the Tap [PDF] report gives a detailed overview of the issues surrounding tap water versus bottled water.More about Bottles, Bottles, Everywhere by Ramon Cruz

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EWG’s Bottled Water Research and Advocacy: Americans drink twice as much bottled water today as they did ten years ago. One would think that purity would be included at a price, that, at a typical cost of $3.79 per gallon, is 1,900 times the cost of public tap water. But EWG’s ground-breaking studies have documented how, when it comes to bottled water, consumers don’t know what they are getting.

Sign up to receive email updates, action alerts & environmental tips from EWG.
To the contrary, our tests strongly indicate that the purity of bottled water cannot be trusted. Given the industry’s refusal to make available data to support their claims of superiority, consumer confidence in the purity of bottled water is simply not justified. more info

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Please pass this song around to friends and favorite musicians.

Musicians:: Arrange, record and remix a better version of this song. I may be able to share the copyright for your work.
Perform this song at your gigs to help our planet.
Fans:: Sponsor this song and get partial copyright — $44 can get you a copyright certificate showing your percentage of the copyright (the percentage varies depending on the song). By the way, $44 pays for a day of Stele’s life expenses including rent, food, guitar strings and other vitals). Plus, I will keep improving the song.
Artists:: Help us do a video for YouTube or do other multimedia goodies for the song.
Students:: Intern with Stele and help get this and other songs on the charts.